RATS IN POSSESSION.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 November 1920, Page 12 (Supplement)

RATS IN POSSESSION.

TOWN TO BE DESTROYED. A New York correspondent relates that a traveller from Peru, William Moss by name, has just arrived and heeti widely reported in the newspapers as declaring that the Peruvian (iovernment has been obliged to order the town of Plata to he destroyed because of the rats. Yellow fever is raging in some districts of Peru, Mr. Moss reported. The town of Paiara with SllflO population, had been particularly hard hit, scarcely a family escaping the ravages of this disease. The advent of swarms of rats caused fear Unit bubonic plague would also develop, and the Government ordered the town to be evacuated, the people going to the outskirts and living in tents. All the buildings will be burned, the rats exterminated, and new sanitary homes constructed. The board bill of New York's rats amounts to 35,000,000 dollars ;: year, according to Dr. Victor (J. Heisler, of the Eockfeller Foundation. Dr. Heisler, in an address, said one rat would eat at least/fen dollars' worth of food in a year, and lie estimated the rodent population of the American metropolis ,at f1.a00.000. He advocated amendment of the building laws so as to make all structures rat proof.